Vero stood back while the men of the Vigil kicked open the door. It was midday and the brothel was practically deserted by comparison to her experience the previous night, but there were still a few desperate looking customers lingering behind. These degenerates were easily rousted by the guard, and it was not long until the entire establishment was empty.

The previous evening, she and Dora returned to their room to get what rest they could. Dora had cleaned and bandaged her cuts and scrapes. They fell asleep holding one another, but when she woke, Vero snuck away alone. She did not wish to risk bringing Dora near danger once again.

Not when they had already tempted fate twice before.

Two Vigil-men busied themselves by nervously hanging cloves of garlic and spreading handfuls of rice along the ground. Vero neglected to inform them that neither would do any good.

Knowledge offers colder comfort than ignorance.

Or so her master often told her, the phrase had come unbidden to her mind.

Even if she did fail, she did not suppose any of the surviving vampyres would be keen on staying in the city to trouble them. She hoped that they would not.

Kitty would see to it that Dora was kept safe at least, she was sure of that.

Vero strode forward into the room in her chainmail shirt and leather pads. Against her better judgement, she left the crossbow back with Dora. She expected to be unable to use the weapon effectively in the mazelike sewers, and she would already be weighed down by stakes and skins of oil. The Vigil-sergeant followed her most of the way to the staircase leading down into the coven’s haven.

“We’re not getting paid enough to go down there and rescue you, I hope you understand that.”

“I don’t expect you to. I shall either be fine, or I shall be dead.”

“That’s no problem then. We’ll stay up here. If you flush any up to us, we’ll pull them into the sun. But that’s where our involvement ends. If it’s getting near dusk and you haven’t come back up- we’ll set the building on fire and collapse the way out on this end. If you’re not out by then, you’ll be stuck down there with those things.”

“I understand. I don’t plan on letting any of them getting away, but keep your eyes open anyway.”

The Vigil-sergeant pushed open the door leading into the darkness. “Good luck Ser, be safe.”

Vero slung a brace of sharpened greenwood stakes over her shoulder and marched downwards into the dark. Descending into the blackness, she could barely see her hand in front of her until she lit her lantern. She held the light in one hand and carried a fresh supply of oil in the other.

She directed herself towards the catacombs she fled from the previous night. Trying to remember her way through the maze as best she could, Vero proceeded forward as quietly as she was able.

The underground tunnels stank of sewage even more terribly during the day. They were cooler than the city above ground, but still very warm. The heat excited the smell and attracted foul buzzing insects everywhere. Vero doubted the vampyres noticed, as they had no need to breathe, but she did not share the same luxury. She pulled a cloth anointed with herbs and oil over her face to find some relief.

The further she ventured, the more her nerves began to wear on her. She was also sore across her right side after being thrown around the previous night. She stopped and took a small draught of poppy milk as a tranquilizer to rebalance her humors. She had long summer hours of daylight ahead of her, quick wits would not be as valuable to her as steady hands and methodical thoughts.

At last, Vero came upon the sleeping chamber she uncovered during the night. As she suspected, along the walls in the sleeping creches, lay the spawn of the coven.

Vero pulled one of the bodies out of its place in the wall. It was heavy and stiff with rigor mortis. She did not try and lift it, only allowed it to fall onto the floor where she could deal with it more easily.

The vampyre did not respond, but laid flat like a creature fully dead. It was too newly spawned to muster strength enough for even the slightest movement in daylight.

With steady workman-like efficiency Vero drove a stake through its heart, secured it in place, and then repeated the process with each vampyre in turn. A few of the more potent blooded – like the mercenary she split open the previous night – summoned up the will to try snapping at her, once the first pound of the mallet drove them out of their day sleep. Repeated driving blows to the stake quickly robbed them of even that limited resistance.

Most of them never moved at all.

When she was finished, she used her blade to strike each of them off at the head.

Which one of them was it that had attacked the unknown woman and first alerted Vero to their presence? There was no way to know.

Perhaps it was Jon. Perhaps it was Fatima herself.

So long as she was sure to get them all, Vero supposed it did not matter.

She believed they were all completely dead after taking off their heads, but to be certain she also spread lantern oil over them. She incinerated them one at a time until the ground was covered in the ashes, taking care not to asphyxiate herself in the poorly ventilated tunnels.

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Neither the leader of the coven nor the brutish bouncer was in the main chamber. They must have kept a private room, or rooms, somewhere else in the maze. She could only hope that it was somewhere nearby. It seemed that even after all her labor, she still had not finished.

Reluctantly, Vero left the chamber and mentally readied herself for more hunting.

Never hunt on a monster’s own terms, until you’re ready to die.

Vero heard her master’s words across her mind’s ear once again.

It would be wiser for her to be satisfied with the work she had done already. It was reckless to press on when her prey was alerted to her, and she no longer knew what lay ahead.

Except that she wanted the elder.

It would leave the city if it escaped her now, and she had never failed a contract before. She still had daylight with her. Wherever they were, the remaining two vampyres may be just as incapacitated as the previous had been.

Presuming that there were only just the two vampyres remaining to oppose her.

She was just considering how to go about finding her prey when she heard pounding, stomping footsteps charging directly for her.

From out of the darkness the brute emerged.

When he entered the radius of her lantern light, he was already horizontal and executing a flying dive directly towards her, with claws and fangs extended.

Vero tried to duck to her side, as far as the cramped confines of the corridor would permit. Even so, the tips of its outstretched claw took her in the hip. The monster flashed past her, carried by its momentum, and whipped Vero into a spin as it went like a child’s top with a pullcord.

Her blood splattered across one wall, while her the lantern and the oil skins crashed into the other, leaving a smear of flames leading to a burning pool on the ground. Vero stumbled back behind the fire, and beat out the sputtering licks of flame along her own arm.

Braced against the wall she held her bleeding side.

She just managed to avoid the main thrust of the assault. If she had not, the claws would have pulled out her intestines in front of her, and she would have died very shortly thereafter. As it was, she was alive, although oozing blood.

Her hip felt as though it might have been dislocated. There were burns across the flesh of her arm, but the muscle beneath was undamaged.

Her opponent swung around to face her, and she could see it licking the blood from its talons. However, the bright light meant that it could not see her in return. It shielded its face to hide from the blazing fire, which Vero endeavored to keep between them, while she removed the flask of holy water from her belt.

The monster moved drowsily after its initial burst of energy, like a punch-drunk fighter. First it stopped to smell the blood splatter on the wall, before following the trail that led from it and greedily lapping up the precious liquid along the way. She would only have the one chance as it moved around the fire.

Vero took it.

She splashed the water directly into the creature and it fell to its knees howling. Its hand raised to protect its face on instinct, but the salt water ate into the undead flesh like acid. Fingers dropped off the hand as it melted down into a boney stump. Holes pitted into the thing’s face where it was splashed by chance drops.

Vero lunged out to grab the creature before it could recover. She used all her might to wrench it off its knees, and down into the flaming oil and shattered glass.

The monster shrieked and tried to lurch back, but she interrupted by hacking its legs out from under it with her sword. The burning creature rolled back and forth for a moment, desperate to smother the fire engulfing it, before Vero put an end to it by taking off its head.

She rolled the body back into the flames, and set off again the way the vampyre had come. She no longer possessed a light, so she had to feel her way along.

Right across the stomach, just like he went. You’re going to die down here, in the dark. You were overconfident, just like your master. Now you’re going to die, just like he did.

It was becoming more difficult for her to walk, but she no longer had the luxury of time.

Sunset was still several hours away, but she would bleed to death much sooner than that if she could not finish the job and get back to help soon. She tried to find her tincture of opiates to relieve the pain, but it was gone.

She could not go back to search for it now.

You were there to retrieve his body. No one will come to find you. You’ll die and your soul will be trapped here. Beneath the ground. In the dark, for all eternity.

There was no need to panic. If she was bleeding, then there was a means for her soul to find a path free. Her spirit could find a it's way, Luna’s light would guide her on. Vero crushed the fear rising in her chest.

And there was no reason to think that she would die. Destroy the elder and return to Dora. Matters were simple.

You never told her what you feel for her.

It was better that Vero had not gotten too close. It would be less painful for the girl. Less painful when Vero did not return.

She was beginning to feel very faint when the corridor opened up into a large sewer chamber. She nearly fell into the water when she tried to rest her weight against a non-existent wall. The sound of running water moving through an aqueduct could be heard nearby. It was lighter there than in the corridor, but only just.

In the center of the room, and looking as imperious as ever, was the master of the coven. “Impressive, slayer. You’ve come closer to actually threatening me than any human in over three hundred years. I believe I shall make you the first of my new coven, would you like that?”

Vero did not feel that she could manage a response, but a brief wrack of coughing had filled her mouth with the metallic tang of blood, so she spat it into the water.

“You can barely stand. Go on. Fall to your knees. If you hold out your wrist to me and submit, I promise you it will be painless.”

Don’t let him mock you! If you must die, strike at him with your dying breath!

Unsteadily, Vero began to make her way forward. The water came up to her knees and the ground was slick, but she moved with slow and careful purpose. The figure of the vampyre smiled and beckoned her onwards.

Time is running out! Strike! Strike now!

“Yes, come here my pet. Make your final heroic attempt.”

Vero stopped directly in front of the striga lord, although still several steps shy.

It was standing on a precipice which, in her condition, would certainly be a mortal fall. The edge was, she believed, much closer in actuality than it appeared to be. She looked at the fanged grinning face in front of her.

She felt a force outside of herself pulling her towards it, and one last desperate maneuver.

This is your last chance!

Vero forced herself away.

Away and towards the blinking and bleary-eyed vampyre monk which huddled in the corner.

As she started moving towards it, the illusion of a proud figure began to scream and rant behind her. “Stop there! I command you! You cannot run from me, you coward! Turn around this instant! I am your lord and master! You will obey me!”

The feeble creature in front of her was too weary and day-weak to even raise an arm in its own defense, after using the last of its unholy strength attempting to entrance her with its illusion. Vero took off its head at the neck.

She had no more oil, and seemed to have lost her remaining stakes somewhere, so all she could do to be sure it was dead was to hack at the body a few more times with her sword. After only a couple of strikes however, she felt too dizzy to continue.

She stopped, but found that she was also too dizzy to stand. She fell directly onto the body which broke like ashes underneath her.

At least you can be sure it died as well, Vero thought to herself, as the darkness enveloped her.

At least Dora shall be safe.